I just bought Toast 8 to burn a long program created in Final Cut Pro. I saved the program as a Final Cut Pro Self Contained Movie (18 GB in size). Then I dragged into Toast, chose automatic encoding with 'best quality' selected. Then I selected 1 button for the menu and let it burn.

The result: every 2.5 seconds throughout the entire program, the frame 'jumps' from one place to another. It is as if the machine held the image in its place 1 frame beyond its duration, then let it snap to its proper position. This snapping effect doesn't appear in the original timeline or the FCP Self Contained movie, just after applying Toast compression. This happens consistently thoughout the DVD from beginning to end.

What could I be doing wrong? I had about 13 GB of spare hard drive memory when I burned this. I use a G4, with OS 10.4. There is not a problem with my burner because I am able to burn data and audio CDs all the time.

Is there a way around this?

Are you working in PAL or NTSC? Not setting up for PAL is a common mistake, since most software is automatically configured for NTSC. Just a stab in the dark, since no-one else is playing.

The timeline was created in NTSC, and I want to burn the DVD for NTSC. I didn't check the prefs prior to burn, but after reading your mail, I took a look. Default is NTSC.

Do you think it might have to do with one of the other settings in Toast like bit rate or field dominance?

OS 10.4 what? You got the latest updates from Roxio? Might look at Roxio's forum and see if anyone else is having same problem with FCP.

[forums.support.roxio.com]

Michael Horton
-------------------

Hi,

Start by making a disc image (see help file for info). Once you have that ready, you can do quality control on your computer. It will tell you if it is your burner or Toast conversion that?s messing with your footage.

one way around it is to not use toast.

not trying to be facecious here, i love toast,
and i love ow simple it is (can be!) to burn DVDs with it.

but iDVD is also pretty simple.
is your movie too big for iDVD perhaps?

if you you have DVD Studio Pro, there are ways to make that a simple process with a simple DVD as the end result.

i'll post a method separately...


nick

this sniped from David Roth Weiss, at Creative Cow:

================================================

The absolute simplest way to make a DVD using FCP and DVDSP is as follows:

1. Export a QT movie, either a reference file or self contained using current settings.

2. Open DVDSP, select the "graphical" tab and you will see two little monitors, one blue, one green.

3. Select the left blue one and hit delete.

4. Now, select the green one, right click on it amd select the top option "first play".

5. Now drag your QT from the broswer and drop it on top of the green monitor.

6. Now, for a DVD from an HD source, look to the right side and select the "general tab" in the track editor, and see the Display Mode, and select "16:9 pan-scan."

7. Hit the little black and yellow burn icon at the top of the page and put a a DVD in when prompted. DVDSP will encode and burn your new DVD.

THATS ALL!!!

================================================

Quote

I just bought Toast 8 to burn a long program created in Final Cut Pro.

Why?

Is this a one off (proof / demo / etc)? A Master for duplication?

One-off = iDVD. Master = DVD Studio Pro.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

This is a one-off. But iDVD wasn't properly compressing my super long program, however hard I tried. I don't have DVD Studio Pro.

I solved the problem, by the way. An engineer at Roxio told me to update to 8.0.3, apparently my problem is quite common on the Mac with Toast 8.0. Thanks for your input, everyone.

...you never did say how long it was and what version iDVD you have...newer versions of iDVD do much better encoding.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Program's about 90 minutes, the version of iDVD is 3+ years old. I guess a new iDVD would have done it for me. This is a never ending learning curve.

It's even easier to use Toast8 with FCP:
Make QuickTime movie from the FCP project.
Drop that icon into the Toaster.
Press red button of Toaster.
The problem with using Toast8 is lack of control of DVD formating.
Also there seems no way in Toast8 to save the .dmg-like file for later quick burns.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

yeah, i love Toast for that.

as a Toast user, any idea why JD's toast burns aren't working?


nick

Is what jdburris calls "Final Cut Pro Self Contained Movie" the same as what I make by choosing File>Export>QuickTime Movie?
Also the QuickTime Movie made, which Toast then must interpret, depends on the Sequence>Settings. There could be something funny set there.

Dennis Couzin
Berlin, Germany

The problem is solved. An engineer at Roxio told me to update Toast 8.0 to 8.0.3. I downloaded from the Roxio site, did this, and my burn went very well. I was told that it is well known that a common problem Mac users have with 8 when burning long programs is that the video stutters, which is what happened to me.

Saving FCP Self Contained Movie is one of the export options. It takes a lot less time to compress into this format than into full-fledged QT. You should be able to find this in your menu of export options.

Quote

Is what jdburris calls "Final Cut Pro Self Contained Movie" the same as what I make by choosing File>Export>QuickTime Movie?

yeah, same thing.
back in the day, they were called "Final Cut Pro Movie" then they changed the name to "QuickTime Movie"

Quote
JD
The problem is solved. An engineer at Roxio told me to update Toast 8.0 to 8.0.3

thanks for that, good to know.
glad you got it fixed.


nick